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The MLA for Edmonton-Strathcona drew inspiration from her high school social studies teacher, Jim Clevette, who taught at Fairview High School in the town of Fairview, six hours north of Edmonton.
“He had a good sense of humour and he made the topic interesting,” says Notley, who remembers Clevette introducing her class to contemporary social and political history, which helped her realize why history mattered.
Clevette had the class read the Leon Uris novel Mila 18, which is about the Warsaw uprising during the Second World War.
“I remember finding it fascinating and reading every single Leon Uris book ever written, even though his politics are not my politics,” recalls Notley.
“Between really enjoying those topics and discussions in high school — and of course my own family context — the two came together to send me down the path I’ve gone, in terms of being very interested in politics.”
Notley’s high school French teacher, Doreen Verschoor, also made a lasting impact.
“She was very good — she was very hard-nosed. You knew what you were doing when you were finished,” says Notley, who only realized how much French she had actually learned after graduating from high school, when she took a year off to work as an au pair in Paris.
Notley, who holds an honours degree in political science from the University of Alberta and a law degree from York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School, ended up focusing on labour law. She worked as a ministerial assistant to the attorney general in B.C. and for the United Nurses of Alberta before being elected in 2008 to the Alberta legislature as a member of Alberta’s New Democratic Party.
She was elected NDP leader in October of 2014 and led the party to a majority victory in the May 5 provincial election.
This story was originally published as part of the Summer Series in 2014, when Rachel Notley was a leadership candidate for the Alberta New Democratic Party.
